1987: GROWING SIGNS OF CONCERN --
THE BRUNDTLAND REPORT

The findings of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), set up by the United Nations in 1983, were published as The Brundtland Report (Our Common Future) in 1987. This report stressed that critical and globally threatening environmental problems were emerging as a result of both poverty in the South and excessive consumption in the North. Issues of intra- and inter-generational equity were introduced .The report argued that the increasingly threatening and unsustainable consequences of development on the environment could not be addressed without significant international co-operation. It argued that the future well-being of the North was not only dependent upon they're changing their development trajectory towards more sustainable practises, but would fail unless countries of the South were also prepared to make changes too. The Commission said that the global economy had to meet people needs and legitimate desires. But growth had to fit within the planets ecological limits. They called for a new era of environmentally sound economic development.

The report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) defined sustainable development as development that

"meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability
of future generations to
meet their needs".

The two concepts pursued in this report are the concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given and the concept of limitations (imposed by the state of technology and social organisation) on the ability of the environment to meet present and future needs.

The Report called for strategies for integrating environment and development. As a result, the UN General Assembly decided in 1989 to hold a conference that would produce these strategies, and using the Brundtland Report as a reference, negotiations began in 1990 in preparation for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), or "Rio Earth Summit", which was to be held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.